Yesterday evening I celebrated the 29th birthday of my friend, J. I am not calling her J like I do when I talk about my clients, that would be weird. J is her nickname because she is petite and sweet and to-the-point and it has fit her for as long as I have known her. All honorary invitees to this party were total foodies (that does not mean FAT, that just means we appreciate different tastes and flavors and the like) so we dined well: chile quile (I don't speak Spanish, but it's pronounced kee-lay), homemade guacamole, and a creamy/cool dessert.
Moosewood Enchanted Broccoli Cookbook, I tell you. Add it to your collection, it'll change your life. Additionally, everytime I go to steam those little green trees, I think about the way Moosewood touts it as mystical and it makes me laugh because if we're going to anthropomorphize broccoli it would totally be boring. Does anyone remember that book: "How to be Perfect in just Three Days? " Part of the process was broccoli three meals a day. I don't remember if he reached perfection, but I do recall my entire third grade class tying broccoli to a string and wearing it around our necks for three days. There was nothing enchanting about it.
Forgoing perfection, writer Barbara Kingsolver pays much homage to the processes of life. About letting things transpire organically, trusting that the basics which we so often neglect, suffice as cultivation. I love Barbara for this, and I loved last night for this too. I'll try to explain. This particular house I was at, is always a little wild and random. Nothing is really set up just so, or has to be this way or just like that. The conversation lulls and then we go outside, wave to the neighbors, talk about tattoos, go back in. Time seems to take its time- slow and lazy and dawdling the way grownups told us not to. The dishes stay undone and the dogs (all four) play. All is well, and I like it. I know that I'll go home when it's time but for now, I'll stay and drink sweet red wine. To my friends in the yellow house, please keep inviting me over. I like laughing with you.
Things move along. We step from one decade to the next. And I think I'm realizing that new things, or stages, or days, are more new-ish, not just plain new. Take age for example. Do you recall when age became very apparent to you? I do. I was probably four. Excuse me. I was probably four and three quarters. Additionally, I was a girl. That small wrapped up bundle was a baby. The gray-haired woman with the old man was a grandma. My cool single babysitter with the poufy bangs and painted fingernails was a teenager. And the tall(er) woman next to me that made rules and kept me safe was a grown-up.
I'm a twenty five year old grown-up, and last night J became a twenty nine year old one. I feel sort of grown-up on the inside, but I am not a very skilled rule-maker and I don't have many people I need to keep safe. Maybe that's coming. Mostly, I feel like I have bits of all of my 4 year old and 9 year old and 15 year old (even thought I tell it to go away) and 21 year old selves in me all at once. Something tells me it's probably not a good idea to leave them behind altogether even though they might be unattractive, lest we forget who we were (are?). If we do, they'll show up, in the middle of the night, drenched in loss: "I don't like feeling deserted."
Unexpected company. Let's invite them in, out of the rain, so they don't stalk us.
We are new(ish) each day but the journey has mattered. And continues to. You know: that year we learned things aren't as they seem. That year we lost hard. That year we realized we can't always deliver. It adds up. I guess it makes sense we wrinkle up too with all that baggage tucked away in our heart and soul. I just sure wish we didn't. Perhaps my 32 year old self will be okay with it :).
thank you for this. you are always invited.
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